


Owltober 17th: Illusions

by Maxrimus



Series: Owltober 2020 [17]
Category: The Owl House (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Illusions, glyphs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27065785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maxrimus/pseuds/Maxrimus
Summary: Gus helps Luz make some magic
Series: Owltober 2020 [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948498
Comments: 10
Kudos: 50





	Owltober 17th: Illusions

**Author's Note:**

> Illusions? Gus? Friendship? EARS? I dunno this one was just fun to write.

“Hey, Gus!” The last class had just let out for the day and Luz found Gus about to leave. She caught up to him as he turned around, smiling at her in greeting. “Hey, are you free after school today?”

“Yea! I just have some homework but it’ll only take an hour or two, what’s up?”

“Well, I was hoping you might be able to help me learn some illusion glyphs. I had an idea you might be able to help me with.” She started explaining the plan as they walked to an empty classroom to practice.

“Ok so the first step is I want you to do a light spell, but try focusing on the glyph inside the spell? Like, you’re an illusionist, so I figure you might be able to make the glyph appear when casting the spell. It might take a few tries, I’m not really sure if this will even work. But since I already know the light glyph you might be able to use that as a visualization technique to help you figure out how to do it first with the light spell, ya know?” 

Gus nodded along to the explanation, deep in thought. “I suppose that would make sense. It would be cool to get a better understanding of how your Human Magic works. Alright, let’s see what I can do.” He flexed his fingers, getting into a casting stance. They spent some time messing around with the light spell, Gus creating ball after ball. They tried some different techniques; visualization, drawing the glyph in the air first, using a paper glyph as a base, just focusing really hard. Eventually, while Luz was trying to come up with more ideas, something seemed to snap in Gus’s head and it happened! Even Gus wasn’t sure exactly what happened but he drew a circle, and as the circle was drawn, the glyph appeared within.

“Alright, Gus! My man!” Luz cheered, patting him on the back as the spell resolved, glyph fading into the light of the spell itself. “So? Do you think you can try that again but with some sort of basic illusion?”

Gus nodded his head, trying to sort through his thoughts. “Give me a few minutes, I’m trying to understand what was different that time.” He starts mumbling under his breath about focus and connection and wavelengths, so Luz just went back to the seat she had been sitting at, continuing to doodle. She noticed a few more lights pop up as Gus did some more testing, noticing some with glyphs and some without. After Gus got three glyphs in a row, he nodded to himself. “Ok, so it’s interesting. It’s actually not about focusing at all, at least not particularly on the glyph. I had thought back to your story from the Knee, about connecting to the island and finding your magic that way. So I just tried that. I thought about the stars, the lights in my home, the sun, and just kind of, let my mind wander. And when I did that I felt a…” He paused, reaching for the right word. “Connection of some sort, like the Titan itself was reading my intentions. And it just worked!”

Luz was smiling broadly at Gus. As cool as it was that she was hopefully about to learn a new glyph, she was even more excited about the look of awe and happiness on Gus’s face. She knew he loved humans, and making this connection to human music seemed to really make his day. He finally turned to Luz, grinning broadly. “Well Luz, are you ready to learn your first illusion spell?” Luz nodded excitedly, standing up and grabbing her notepad to copy the glyph.

Gus closed his eyes, going almost into a meditative state. Presumably thinking about the connections he has to this spell, and trying to form that same connection to the island again. He traced out a small circle and first try, I saw a glyph. I copied it down quickly before the spell resolved, although nothing seemed to happen. “Gus did the spell not do anything?” She asked, looking at Gus’s grin confused. Gus pulled out his scroll, opening the camera and turning it to Luz, noticing she had pointed witch ears! “Awwwww Gus! These look so good!” She reached up, feeling the weighty etherealness that all illusions held. She twitched her ears slightly, seeing the witch ears twitch alongside them. 

She swept Gus up into a hug, which he just laughed a little awkwardly at. “Well let’s see if you can do them!” He drew another spell circle, dispelling the ears. Luz looked down at the glyph she had drawn, memorizing it like all the others. She looked up at Gus, smiling softly, thinking hard about the image she wanted to project, then tapped the glyph. From Gus’s perspective this time it seemed like nothing had happened but Luz grabbed his scroll, turning the camera on him to show his newly human ears. “OhmygoshOhmygoshOhmygosh.” He reached up, feeling the ears, eyes glowing in admiration. It was his turn now, giving Luz a hug in thanks.

They both laughed, then spent the next hour or two just testing out the spell, seeing what kind of crazy stuff they could make each other change into. They left, promising to do it again sometime. Gus had so much more to teach Luz, and Luz felt like she could teach Gus a lot too.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm doing Owltober! But I'm no good at art so I'll be writing short(Hopefully less than 1k words) fics instead!
> 
> I'm using this set of prompts: https://www.instagram.com/p/CE9DDCQnKGg/  
> From ba.burrito.art on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ba.burrito.art/?hl=en


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